Greenhouse II
OK! So now we have tons of windows and a loosely sketched idea of what it will look like when its complete. What to do now?
We determined that a beam and post style structure would be the best plan to hold up these very heavy windows. First things first we needed to map out the size of the structure, and figure out the grade. Luckily, my friend who had just finished building a house had tons of awesome tools for me to borrow. The most important was a laser level, to help us determine the grade. It clocked in at a 36" drop from front to back. A little more than I had anticipated....so naturally we were looking at a second story of windows...and a VERY large backside to this building.
Next step was drilling 8 holes at least 28" deep and 14" wide. Our story begins on a crisp October morning, when Mom and I innocently drove down in my SUV to rent some sort of drilling thingy. We found out that we'd needed an auger. 1 man or 2 man became our choices.....when we saw how big they were, we were in shock! We ended up choosing the 1 man, which both of us would need to use together to have enough power to work. It had a gas tank- and required a hitch to drag home on a trailer. HAHA! So we drove home, dropped of my SUV which does not have hitch, and returned with her little Toyota Corolla. The auger weighed more than the car! We got lots of looks as we hooked it up to the car and set for home. Once we arrived we spent 30 minutes at least just getting it wheeled down to where we were going to drill. Then we had to look up on YouTube how to turn it on. This was going to be an adventure! The hill is so steep we had to constantly look for larger rocks to stick behind the wheels if we had a chance to actually push down with the drill. Trouble was, as soon as we got more than 6" down we would start hitting huge rocks- which would kick the drill to a 45 degree angle and it'd be drilling totally off our mark. It took us longer using this damn thing than it would have with a toothpick. After getting as far as we could on the 8 holes, in the end -- we used good old fashioned strength from my husband and he dug the last 6" or so down on every hole. The 14" wide holes were now well over 20"
Next came the posts. This part was the most scary to me. Nothing could be wrong or crooked or the entire project would be in jeopardy. A friend of mine came over and showed me how to do the first 2 posts. There were all kinds of dizzying details having something to do with Pythagoras and string, and levels and bags and bags of concrete. I was pretty nervous once we finished those two and the other 6 were left for me to do!
The posts were 14-16' high so that was very hard to lift, balance or get centered in the holes, there was lots of finagling and shifting as one person held the post and constantly checked for level and plum- the other person poured and stabbed concrete for hours. The hardest part was literally sitting there until the concrete dried- on a 50 degree October day.
On the third day when we decided to knock out the final 3 posts-- It was a beautiful day. All was well. Bu the time we had 2 of the posts in, the wind had picked up considerably. No time to stop now-- so we pushed on. By the time they were all in we were dealing with an full on wind storm. Mom and I sat out there for hours making small adjustments and waiting till every post was set and dry.
